ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WILSON 



AT 



SUFFRAGE CONVENTION 



ATLANTIC CITY, N. J. 



SEPTEMBER 8, 1916 



-^■M 




WASHINGTON 







D. of D. 

0:~ 1! 1918 



ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT AT SUFFRAGE (mVEiNTIOiN. 



]Madam Pkesidext. Ladies of the Association: 

I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen 
to the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all 
of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else 
speak than speak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a 
duty if I did not address you to-night and say some of the things 
that have been in my thought as I realized the approach of this 
evening and the dutj^ that would fall upon me. 

The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, 
not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. 
Xo doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like 
your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has 
been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this 
moA-ement in recent decades, you must agree v>'ith me that it is one 
of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations 
ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying, it 
was a handful of womeii/who Avere fighting this cause. Xow it is a 
great multitude of women Avho are fighting it. 

And there are some interesting historical connections which I 
would like to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking- 
facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it 
was a lawyers' history. Almost all of the questions to which Amer- 
ica addressed itself, say a hundred 3'ears ago, were legal questions, 
were questions of method, not questions of what you were going to 
do with your Government, but questions of how you were going to 
constitute your Government, — how you were going to balance the 
powers of the States and the Federal Government, how you were 
going to balance the claims of property against the processes of 
liberty, how you were going to make your governments up so as to 
balance the parts against each other so that the legislature would 
check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and the courts 
both of them put together. The whole conception of government 
when the United States became a Nation was a mechanical concep- 
tion of government, and the mechanical conception of government 
Avhich underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If 
you pick up the Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on 

63043— 1<? '^ 



astronomy instead of a treatise on government. They speak of the 
centrifugal and the centripital forces, and h:)cate the President some- 
where in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of 
power and an adjustment of parts./ There was a time when nobody 
but a lawyer could laiow enough to run the Government of the 
United States, and a distinguished English publicist once remarked, 
speaking of the complexity of the American Government, that it 
was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it 
had been successfully operated, because the Americans coidd run any 
constitution. But there have been a great many technical difficulties 
in running it. 

And then something happened. A great question arose in this 
country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom 
a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. That 
was the slaver}^ question. And is it not significant that it was then, 
and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics 
ill America ? Xot man}' women ; those prominent in that day were so 
few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but, never- 
theless, they then began to play a part in writing, not only, but in 
public speech, Avhich was a very novel part for women to play in 
America. After the Civil AVar had settled some of what seemed to 
be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the 
Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the 
United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the 
Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is 
now so manifest to those who look onlj-^ a little w^iy beneath the sur- 
face. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in 
those simpler days. The pressure of low^ wages, the agony of obscure 
and unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like 
the same proportions that they exist now. And as our life has un- 
folded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot. as the 
populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the 
country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole 
nature of our political questions has been altered. They have ceased 
to be legal questions. They have more and more become social ques- 
tions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one 
another, — not merely their legal relations, but their moral and 
sjMritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic 
of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have 
assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement whicli this 
association represents has gathered cumuhiti\e force. So that, if any- 
body asks himself, "What does this gathering force mean.*' if lie 
knows anything about the history of the country, lie knows thr.t it 
means something that has not only come to stay, but has come witli 
conquering power. 



I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the chan- 
nels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, 
and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attrib- 
utes it to mere social unrest. It is not merely because the women are 
discontented. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, 
and that is something which we not only can not resist, but, if we 
be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took its origin 
in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of 
liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come 
up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, 
America comes more and more into her birthright and into the per- 
fection of her development. 

So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort 
is that w^e are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt 
as I sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Al- 
most every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to 
fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have 
not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I ha^-e^comg. 
to suggfiS.t:.,among other things, that when the forces of nature are 
stea'dily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need 
not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we 
rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run 
as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses 
of men and organized bodies of opinion,, you have got to carry the 
organized body along. The whole art and practice of government 
consists, not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. It is all 
very w^ell to run ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to 
wait for the body to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, 
because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there 
was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be tri- 
umphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait. 

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